Bank of America sucks, and here is why:

Nearly a month ago, I signed up for a Bank of America account online. I did this because BoA has an ATM on the JPL campus and I'm always in favor of easy access to cash. Part of my deal with BoA is that I get free online banking, free bill pay, and an account with no fees so long as I have at least one direct deposity a month. I figured that would be easy since JPL uses direct deposit.

When I tried to set up my direct deposity with JPL, they told me that they absolutely, positively had to have some sort of authentication of my account number and routing number. They, of course, asked for a voided check. Since I have no checks with my BoA account, I told them that I couldn't give them one. They suggested that I get a letter from the bank simply saying what my account number and routing number were and that they were, in fact, mine. Sounds easy, right?

For my National City savings account (which I'm tithing into), all I did was call and my home branch faxed me over a letter by the afternoon. For BoA, I tried calling them twice. Each time, they told me that what I was asking was impossible. I then decided to try to go to a branch. There is a branch less than a mile from JPL, so I headed over after work. They told me that they couldn't help me. They couldn't even look up my account information since the account had been opened "out of state."

I thanked the people at the branch for their help and told them that I wanted to close the account since it was useless to me without direct deposit. Turns out, I couldn't even do that there since they couldn't look up my information. Thus, I called BoA support again and told them that I needed to close my account. THIS time, they were willing to help me. Once I explained the situation around my desire to close, the customer service woman immediately offered to have the exact letter I needed mailed to me. I decided to go ahead and have them do that as it was easier than closing one account and opening a new one elsewhere.

Moral of the story: A bank will do anything to keep you from closing the account--even what they told you was "impossible" just a few hours ago.

At least I'll be able to have my direct deposit.

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